It's interesting how all music of the past always gets this kind of irony factor later. No matter what, nearly everything seems funny, yet hip somehow, from a past decade just ten or fifteen years on. The time it takes for things to this to happen seems to get shorter and shorter too. As nothing new of interest happens musically, it seems like everything from the past is in. The 60's are still cool...perpetually it seems...maybe it's because the music from 66-69 was actually good I don't know. There seems to be less of an irony factor going on there too perhaps for the same reasons. The 70's and 80's are both in also but with more of an ironic tinge. I can't generally defend the 70's as a musical whole (obviously there was some great stuff going on but mostly underground) but I feel like the early 80's deserves a bit better than to be lumped in with the 85-89 era.
Perhaps much of the irony factor concerns fashion and hairstyle. The pre-hippie 60's were glamourous and stylish and classic. Haircuts from then still look great. The 70's had the bell-bottoms and hippie hangover fashion which is easily mocked and the 80's are too with the mousses and gels and the pastels and flourescent colors. I'm not sure what the 90's was fashion-wise...The 90's was pretty blah...just a bunch of designers' names on shit. Of course that trend continues today with the Abercrombie & Fitch/Aeropostale name-on-thing trend. It's all as hollow as the music itself. (I've heard Huey Lewis and Peter Gabriel which are certainly not too exciting as they're so overplayed...and right now is Depeche Mode's classic "Just Can't Get Enough" into Bowie's "Let's Dance"...Why is the only song by OMD anyone knows that crappy song "If You Leave"...I know it's because it was on some soundtrack but why couldn't people pick a good song by them for a soundtrack instead?)
Where the late 80's was saturated with sexist joke hair-metal that had a sense of humor and personality at very least if not much musical quality, the 90's really had no identity of its own in mainstream music. Sure techno was something new and all but lacked the ability to really cross over as it was so faceless. That left us with the Pearl Jam ilk...This was serious music as a polar opposite in intent to the hair-metal bands. These bands were all ANGRY and from damaged families and bullied childhoods. They sang about their pain while dating porn stars like the hair-metallists did. The bands wanted to sound like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and a few mixed that with hip-hop. Of course those bands were the worst of all...not able to be like Nirvana the same way indie bands couldn't be like Pavement and thinking they could just do hip-hop without any real affinity for it.
Trying to sound like a band doesn't make you the band. Oasis tried to sound like the Beatles and thought for some silly reason that it made them as good as (or better than!) the Beatles. Likewise, people missed the point of what made Nirvana great. It was the genuine emotion and good songs! All these non- rap-rock bands did was end up sounding like Pearl Jam who basically were just another rock band who wanted to sound like Black Sabbath and Neil Young. Music stopped having any quality of newness or timeliness. Bands all sounded the same. Of course, nothing has changed! The past ten years have essentially seen music go nowhere. In the span of time the Beatles made ALL THEIR RECORDS, bands still sound like Pearl Jam. Pretty lame.
OK to be fair, the Neptunes are pretty snappy but to me most hip-hop doesn't really compare to the stuff from the 80's. In rock, bands try to sound like the past. I like The Strokes ok and all but they're trying to sound like a specific thing from the past. They clearly want to have guitars that sound like Television. I love Television so I love those guitars and think the Strokes have a great sound. I just think it's possible to have influences and strive to do something new and there's no movement of bands who either have a new style or sound like THEMSELVES! Where are all the groups with instantly indentifiable sounds? Certainly in mainstream music there aren't any. When you hear say...The Go-Betweens you KNOW that guitar is them. Not that they were mainstream or anything but the point remains the same.
11:34:01 AM 
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